Al-Mustapha Again Challenges Obasanjo To Public Debate Over 1, 000 Snipers Allegation

HamzaAl-MustaphaAndObasanjoFormer Chief Security Officer, CSO, to the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (retd.), has again challenged former President Olusegun Obasanjo to an open debate over claims by the latter that the former CSO was contracted by immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to help it train 1,000 snipers and assassins.
Mr. Obasanjo made the weighty allegation among others, in his now infamous 18-page stinker to Mr. Jonathan in 2014.
Al-Mustapha denied the allegation then just as former President Jonathan in his own stinker to Obasanjo, fell short of accusing the Ota farmer of treason.
Addressing some select journalists in Lagos, on Monday, on some number of issues relating to his 15 years’ incarceration over the alleged assassination of Chief Kudirat Abiola, wife of the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections, Chief M.K.O Abiola, the former de-facto second in command to the late Abacha, also debunked insinuations that Jonathan interfered with court process to facilitate his release from prison to enable him (Al-Mustapha) help train the ‘killer squad’ or procure the former president’s success in the North during the last general elections.
It would be recalled that Al-Mustapha was acquitted of the murder of Mrs. Abiola by the Court of Appeal in Lagos on July 12, 2013.
However, speaking today on his travails, Mr. Al-Mustapha said ab initio, he had no case to answer but for the plots of his persecutors to see him eliminated because he stepped on their toes while he served as the CSO to late Gen. Abacha.
He added that the Appellate Court acquitted him when it determined that he had no case to answer of all the charges leveled against him.
He said: “Firstly, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan was not the one that facilitated my release. Rather, my release was facilitated by the content of the case as determined by the Court of Appeal. We were not even supposed to have been arrested in the first place. After all, witnesses were induced and contracted to implicate us. At the end of the day, we were subjected to all manner of torture and abuses of our human rights. Today, despite the fact that we were convicted on grounds that were baseless without evidence and even against the submissions of their witnesses, they did the contrary outside what was before the court of law.
“So, when the Appellate Court looked at the matter in totality, we were released based on purely the rule of law. So, anybody saying Jonathan facilitated my release is either one of my persecutors or those who have taken money from them. There are public documents in the public for all to see these facts.”
Adding, he said, “On the allegation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that I was contracted by the Jonathan administration to train 1,000 snipers, I have challenged him to an open debate to substantiate his allegations. Obasanjo cannot go about creating an allegation that is totally false. If that assertion of Obasanjo was true, now that President Muhammadu Buhari was in power, now that the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA is being x-rayed, now that those who collected money from that office are being x-rayed by different committees, that allegation of Obasanjo would have come to fore.
“Nobody contracted me to catch 1, 000 mosquitoes under the Jonathan administration, not to talk of human beings. I am Al-Mustapha, I have my background. away from the propaganda peddled by the likes of Obasanjo. Obasanjo has had his day, I am doing my investigation, and I have discovered so many things as to what gave him (Obasanjo) that input to have made such allegation then. I have it. I will release it very soon and that is why I have challenged him to an open debate.
“Obasanjo is my senior militarily, he was a former Military Head of State in this country, but when issues of law and rights of man are being discussed, definitely equality comes to the fore. You can’t put an allegation against your junior because you are a senior, and you believe the junior would keep quiet. No, I would not. That would amount to ignorance. I am not ignorant about our laws. I challenge Obasanjo to an open debate, so that he can substantiate his allegations before the whole world, but he is yet to oblige the challenge. Thank God today, a new government is here, where he (Obasanjo) can bring up the issue again, requesting it to scrutinise, and if there is any contract between President Jonathan and I, to catch one single mosquito, I want to say that I am guilty and want to be tried”.